“The flat is empty, Collins is not here.”
Hunter cursed beneath his breath. Nevertheless he left the unmarked CID car, followed by Grace, Tony Bullars and Mike Sampson, already garbed in their forensic suits.
The detectives entered the flat via the ground floor door at the rear of the building. The firearms team were just ‘racking’ their weapons, clearing rounds from the chambers of their Heckler and Kock MP5s.
Hunter gave them a studious glance. He admired the elite team, always viewing them as a necessary evil in the fight against crime. It had always been his mind-set never to carry a gun. If truth be told he didn’t trust himself with something which could take away someone’s life from the slightest of touch. He had always been worried that with a gun in his hand he might get it so wrong — especially when the red mist came. No, he’d stick with his fists. He had more control over them and the damage he left behind was always repairable. He squeezed past them, over the bits and pieces of broken timber and glass, which had once been the back door. It had been well and truly knocked off its hinges.
Grace, Tony and Mike followed up behind.
They all cringed and screwed up their faces as a rancid smell reached their nostrils. Glancing around, the flat was a hovel, filthy and malodorous. A table in the centre of the room was covered in dirty crockery, a half eaten sandwich, and milk had curdled in its plastic container.
Hunter scrutinised the setting and wondered if it normally was left in such a state, or had Collins left in a hurry.
A bare electric bulb provided the only light, and wallpaper, the pattern of which must have come from the seventies, peeled in places from the damp walls.
In the bedroom a patch of light streamed through a gap in the curtains picking out objects within the sparsely furnished room. Against one wall was an old fashioned metal bed covered in an array of yellow stained sheets. The image reminded Hunter of Tracey Emin’s Turner Prize submission to The Tate Gallery.
On a bed side unit laid a lap top computer. It was still switched on.
A bundle of newly printed photographs lay scattered over the floor. Grace picked one up, studied it, and turned it to Hunter’s face. He instantly recognised the close-up shot of the pretty teenage girl — Kirsty Evans — who now lay critically injured in Barnwell General.
He shook his head disconsolately. “We need to nail this bastard, and quick before he attacks again.”
Grace nodded in agreement, shook out one of the plastic exhibit bags she had been carrying in her jacket pocket and dropped in the photo. Pulling the top off her marker pen with her teeth she timed and dated the exhibit label and bent down to scoop up more of the pictures. They all appeared to be snaps of Kirsty, taken at regular intervals, and she instantly identified the background as the park where Kirsty had been attacked.
Hunter whipped out his police radio. It sparked into life as he pressed the open channel button “I want Scenes of Crime and the computer team up here immediately,” he called in.
He knew they wouldn’t be long. He had included them in his operational plan the previous evening, briefing the SOCO manager over the phone before leaving work, and ensuring that they were in their vans at the end of the street before the start of the morning’s raid.
Though his team would be carrying out a thorough search to gather evidence he knew that he still required the full range of specialist skills to process the crime scene, and despite the fact that the firearms unit had trampled through most of the flat Hunter knew that there would still be some significant clues around.
Within minutes he heard the heavy footfalls of several individuals clomping hurriedly up the stairs.
Red-faced and breathing heavily, SOCO manager Duncan Wroe, whom he had known for many years, poked his head of straggling hair and unshaven face round the door. As usual the white forensic suit he wore hung limp on his rake-thin frame. He unfortunately always looked so dishevelled; yet despite that appearance Hunter knew that Duncan was one of the best SOCO officers around. So much so, that two years previously he had been selected by the Home Office as a member of a Forensic Science Team to travel to Afghanistan and train up newly appointed Afghan Scenes of Crime officers in modern forensic science methods.
Hunter knew he was going to get a thorough job done. He greeted him eagerly, snapping off one of his latex gloves to shake his hand. His part was over. It was time to update the SOCO manager and hand the crime scene over.
As Hunter briefed Duncan the computer technician slid past, making straight for the laptop. The pale-faced, spectacle wearing young man slotted a memory stick into one of the available ports and hit the ‘enter’ tab. The screen saver flashed on. The desktop image showed another picture of Kirsty Evans. It was a replicated shot from one of the photos Grace had already recovered as evidence.
The technician pushed his spectacles back over the bridge of his nose, entwined the fingers of both hands together and bent them back until they clicked. For a few seconds his elongated digits hovered above the laptop.
The image reminded Hunter of a pianist about to play a concerto.
As if reading his thoughts his fingers dropped onto the keyboard and began their dance upon the keys. After a few seconds he mumbled. It seemed more to himself than to anyone else in the room. “The guy’s password protected his system. This will take me a little time.” The techie began to work the keyboard again.
Around the room the Scenes of Crime officers’ activity had also begun. They were setting up a camera to record the scene, and taping the unmade bed for fibre samples.
Hunter knew from experience that finding transferred fibres could link a victim to the scene. He tugged at Grace’s elbow. “There’s nothing we can do here for now. Bag up all the photos and we’ll get back to the station. We need to get Collins circulated tonight.”
She acknowledged with a nod of her head and finished sealing the exhibit bag.
* * * * *
Hunter entered the MIT office to find that Barry Newstead was its sole occupant. The big man was hunkered over a computer, laboriously plink-plonking the keyboard using only his index fingers. Hunter smiled to himself as he watched the seasoned ex-detective thump each key with his stubby fingers. It was a complete contrast to the typing skills he had recently witnessed being performed by the young computer technician on Collins’ laptop.
Hunter scraped back his seat with his leg, slipped of his jacket, dropped it over the chair back and flopped down. “Shall I get you a bucket of water Barry, that keyboard’s going to be on fire soon,” he said straight-faced.
“Piss off,” Barry retorted, eyes still focussed downwards.
“Now, now Mr Newstead show some respect.”
“Piss off Detective Sergeant.” He glanced across at Hunter, pushing his spectacles up onto his head, catching his gaze.
They both cracked a grin.
“Bloody computers, they’re more trouble than they’re worth,” Barry added, rolling his neck and knuckle-rubbing the tension from around his eyes. “Anyway Mr Sarcastic where’s your side-kick?”
“Grace is booking in some evidence we got from Collins’s place. We found a whole bunch of recent photos of Kirsty Evans. They look like they were taken in the park just before she was attacked. We’ve got him bang to rights when we catch him.”
“Any stuff relating to the other girls?”
“When I left Scenes of Crime were just starting, and a computer whizz-kid was just going through Collins’s laptop. Anyway I’m surprised to find you in. I thought you’d got a load of statements to get.”
“I heard on the radio that you’d not got Collins and I guessed you’d want all his background stuff to track him down. That’s what I was doing, or trying to do, when you came in.”
“Okay what have you got for me then?”
Barry snatched up a bundle of papers and pointed them towards Hunter. “I got most of it from the Sex Offender Officer in the Public Protection Unit. He told me over the phone what they had got on the computer, which wasn’t as much as what was held in a paper file they had, so he faxed me that. I’ve skip read it and it contains his entire prosecution file. I’ve also rung Probation and they’ve given me snippets from his prison intelligence record as well as info from all the meetings they’ve had with him. They’ve e-mailed me everything but I can’t seem to pull the bloody stuff off.”